Games 35 & 36: Georgia vs Portugal live from the Arena AufSchalke ITV1 8pm AND Czechia vs Turkey live from the Volksparkstadion ITV4 8pm

[The_jagster]

32 teams is better because you don't have the last groups knowing that a draw won't be enough, whereas early groups are caught between thinking a draw might be enough to go through in third and going for the win.

[Pukey]

The 24 team thing is messy but these pundits are attacking it for such a nonsense reason, it's genuinely incredible. They're blaming the 24 team format for something that's always a possibility whatever groups you suggest.

[GunmaN1905]

It's kind of a trade-off.

Groups have been really entertaining because of third placed teams having a chance to get into the knockouts.
But most third place against group winners matchups in the knockouts look really one-sided.
Adding 8 more teams wouldn't lower the quality that much, but it would make the groups really dull because of just two teams advancing and more or less guaranteeing there are no groups of death.

[enigmatic]

1 hour ago, GunmaN1905 said:

It's kind of a trade-off.

Groups have been really entertaining because of third placed teams having a chance to get into the knockouts.
But most third place against group winners matchups in the knockouts look really one-sided.
Adding 8 more teams wouldn't lower the quality that much, but it would make the groups really dull because of just two teams advancing and more or less guaranteeing there are no groups of death.

Depends on the group. Some of them have been particularly dull because not losing three games is probably enough to get you through 

Edited June 27 by enigmatic

[Rob1981]

For me, the bigger issue around 24 teams is the imbalance and the 'unfairness' of the different groups.

Like the winners of four groups get away with playing a third place team, whereas the winners of two groups have to play a group runner-up.

And even beyond the R16... if England reach the QF, they still only have to play the R16 winner from a game with two runners-up.  Same for Portugal, albeit one of the group runners-up for them could be France.  Whereas the other group winners start hitting each other.

I remember seeing a statistics paper someone had written ahead of the 2016 tournament.  Even before the draw was made you could show that being placed in a certain group gave you a statistically higher chance of winning the tournament.  Whereas 16 teams or 32 teams... winners and runners-up all have an equal chance of colliding at the same time.

The stuff about Ukraine is nonsense though.  Maybe they are unlucky, but they haven't been penalised by the format.  A 4-4-4-4 group can always happen.  And virtually every 16-team or 32-team tournament you will find that some teams on 4 points scrape through in 2nd and some teams on 4 points go out in 3rd... even though the two teams have both won one, drawn one and lost one.

Edited June 27 by Rob1981

[GunmaN1905]

55 minutes ago, Rob1981 said:

For me, the bigger issue around 24 teams is the imbalance and the 'unfairness' of the different groups.

Like the winners of four groups get away with playing a third place team, whereas the winners of two groups have to play a group runner-up.

And even beyond the R16... if England reach the QF, they still only have to play the R16 winner from a game with two runners-up.  Same for Portugal, albeit one of the group runners-up for them could be France.  Whereas the other group winners start hitting each other.

I remember seeing a statistics paper someone had written ahead of the 2016 tournament.  Even before the draw was made you could show that being placed in a certain group gave you a statistically higher chance of winning the tournament.  Whereas 16 teams or 32 teams... winners and runners-up all have an equal chance of colliding at the same time.

The stuff about Ukraine is nonsense though.  Maybe they are unlucky, but they haven't been penalised by the format.  A 4-4-4-4 group can always happen.  And virtually every 16-team or 32-team tournament you will find that some teams on 4 points scrape through in 2nd and some teams on 4 points go out in 3rd... even though the two teams have both won one, drawn one and lost one.

That's why there should've been a draw. Add a couple more days of rest, but this is just nonsense.

Two best second placed teams get seeded, teams from the same group can't play together, CL-style draw.

I dont' care about logistics, as if they're not an issue with teams not knowing the full draw already. Add an extra day or two of rest if needed.

[Yuko]

It should go back to 16 teams

[The_jagster]

1 hour ago, Rob1981 said:

The stuff about Ukraine is nonsense though.  Maybe they are unlucky, but they haven't been penalised by the format.  A 4-4-4-4 group can always happen.  And virtually every 16-team or 32-team tournament you will find that some teams on 4 points scrape through in 2nd and some teams on 4 points go out in 3rd... even though the two teams have both won one, drawn one and lost one.

I don't know if the pundits are just idiots or expressed themselves poorly, but it's similar to your complaints about head to head and goal difference.

You are separating 3rd placed teams based on total points scored(points scored matters most) but discounting any teams in 4th place who may have scored more points.

I think it's unfair based on both what I said earlier (groups E and F know what they need to do with more certainty) and that group difficulty isn't equal, which is fine when separating teams within a group but less good across groups. Hungary had to play 3 matches against teams who wanted to get a result, Georgia only had to play 2.